T-shirt.Jeans.Not exactly an outfit likely to win any sartorial contest, but at least they didn’t smell of stale coffee or have the creases of several days’ wear.Glanced at the clock to see I still had a couple of minutes to get the house in order.
I saw him as I rounded the corner from the stairs, his back at least.Sitting on the edge of a lounger out on the deck, staring down at the cityscape as he waited.
I watched him for a moment, eyes reminding themselves of the shape of his back, the contours of his shoulders.Realized I was clenching my fists at my sides from nerves and anxiety; forced myself to take a few deep breaths before stepping to the door.
“Hey,” I said, sliding it open.
Kai turned to look up at me, an expression I couldn’t quite decode on his face.I fought the urge to look away.
“Hey,” he said, eventually.He sounded...wary, maybe.
“It’s kinda messy inside,” I started to explain, only for him to interrupt me.
“I’m not here to judge your housekeeping skills, Tate.”
I tried my best to hide my wince.The thought of being “judged” by any metric left me feeling uncomfortable.
“Okay,” I conceded, “do you want coffee?”
Kai stood up, brushing his hands down his jeans.“Sure.”
“It’ll have to be black,” I remembered.“The cream has expired.”
He shrugged, clearly waiting for me to stop blocking the door.
I bit my lip and led him into the kitchen.
“Sorry about the state of things,” I apologized again, giving a half-hearted gesture intended to encompass the whole room and, quite probably, myself as well.
Kai glanced around.“I see you decided to redecorate with a college dorm theme.”
I chuckled, awkwardly, as I heaped coffee into the machine and filled the water tank.
“Something like that,” I conceded.“The past few days have been...challenging.”I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I said it.
Silence, then.Only the hissing and gurgles of boiling water to break it.I reached deep into the cabinet to pull out a couple of clean mugs, and then stood awkwardly waiting for the carafe to fill.
“Tate,” Kai said, eventually.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting him here but at the same time not wanting to listen, to have to have the conversation I knew was inevitable.
“Is it good to be back?”I asked him, instead.He’d have caught up with his friends, now, would be getting used to his new schedule.Normalcy once more.
A pause.“Kinda,” he answered, finally.
For a moment, I thought one word was all I’d get.
“I mean, it can be frustrating and a pain in the ass,” he concluded, after a moment, “but it’ll all be worth it in the end, right?”
I treated his question as rhetorical, not sure how to even begin to answer it.A little apathy before the hard work struck up again was understandable, despite the whole medical school thing having started out much more a dream of his father’s, than of Kai’s himself.Even if now it felt like he’d finally begun to find a groove of his own to fit into.
I poured the coffee; took a gulp from my mug, then another.As if familiar motions could save me, even if my movements were jerky.
“Who knows,” I told him, “you might meet someone.”Hated the words as soon as they came out of my mouth; felt their weirdness hanging in the air between us like a haze of mosquitos.The room thick with them, and with tension; something to push through, as I walked outside.
Kai sat down, on the lounger opposite me.Frustration in the set of his shoulders.
“I don’t get why you’d say that,” he replied, finally.There was a little heat in his tone, yes, but mostly Kai just sounded tired.Forlorn, even, as he looked away from me, out across the valley.
